Mastercard to roll out program that will help banks offer crypto trading

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Payments titan Mastercard (NYSE:MA) is teaming up with cryptocurrency platform Paxos to introduce a new program on Monday that will help lenders offer crypto trading to their clients.

As such, Mastercard (MA) said it will take care of the regulatory compliance and security in an effort to make crypto trading services more attractive for financial institutions to adopt. The move comes on the heels of Mastercard's (MA) plans to launch a tool that will help banks find and block suspicious transactions from crypto exchanges.

If Crypto Source, which was said to be piloted in Q1 2023, gains traction with banks, then it could become a direct competitor with U.S.-based crypto exchanges such as Coinbase Global (COIN).

Even as the industry undergoes a bear market, “there’s a lot of consumers out there that are really interested in this, and intrigued by crypto, but would feel a lot more confident if those services were offered by their financial institutions,” Mastercard’s chief digital officer, Jorn Lambert, pointed out to CNBC, declining to say which lenders signed up for the program. “It’s a little scary to some people still.”

While the crypto industry experiences a tough downturn after token prices plunged at the beginning of 2022, Mastercard continues to deepen its involvement in the emerging space. In August, Ebang's Ebonex partnered with Mastercard to launch a crypto-linked card.